Saving Water and Saving Energy - Human Behavior

Saving water and saving energy in a residential home setting, is largley a behavioural problem. If you observe how people use thier water for instance, you can spot wasteful behaviors all over the place.


Yard and lawn watering behaviors that don't save water

There are the obvious wasteful behaviours, such as watering the lawn at the wrong time of day, or over watering, and even watering the sidewalks and streets. The behavior in these cases is I guess, lazyness. All are easily corrected, but require someone to take the corrective action.


Low flow fixtures VS. behavior - To save water and energy

Once of the most often used water conservation methods or device is the low flow fixture. Low flow fixtures are a double edged sword. They can provide significant savings, and in turn can inadvertently cause a lot of waste.

For example, low-flow fixtures limit the maximum flow rate available from the fixture. This translates to lower water velocities through the pipe, and thus require a longer wait for hot water. However, a common reaction for those people who have very long pipe runs, is to turn on the hot water in the shower and go do something else while the shower gets hot. When they return, they often return to find hot water running down the drain.

Depending on how long the water ends up running before the human returns to use it, the savings in water is negatively impacted, and can even end up wasting more water than if the low flow fixture had not been used to begin with.

In the previous scenario energy is also being wasted. The cost of heating water is much higher than the cost of the water being heated. Running hot water down the drain is very expensive in terms of money savings... or loss!


Save Water - Behaviors in the Bathroom

Studies have shown that 80 percent of the time a typcal hot water draw occurs at a bathroom sink, the hot water doesn't make it all the way to the fixture. Most of us are guilty of this behavior... impatience... we turn on the hot water to wash our hands and we can't wait for the hot water so we start washing, only to finish about the time the water starts to warm up.

If you don't end up using the hot water, and all you've done is filled the pipe with hot water which will then cool off, then you have essentially wasted the energy. Better to not use the hot water faucet at all.

There are a whole lot of behaviors in the bathroom that can lead to wasting water, things like letting the water run while you brush your teeth, especially warm or hot water, running water whle you shave, lingering in the shower, etc.

The laundry room and saving water and energy

The obvious answer to saving water in the laundry room is to use the smallest load setting possible while still having enough to get the clothes clean. Using cold water instead of warm or hot saves energy as well.


Save water in the kitchen

The kitchen also suffers from human behavior caused water wastage. Single handeled faucets along with human habits are a contributor to energy wastage. If you don't swing the handle all the way to the left when drawing cold water, then you are drawing some hot water as well... a waste of energy.

Running the hot water to get your dishwasher really hot water is wastefull of water, running water to rinse dishes thouroughly, even hot water, when your dish washer doesn't need pre-rinsing, etc.

Save water and be energy efficient

There is one solution to several of these water saving problems... a demand hot water system of course. In the bathroom it will save energy and water by eliminating running water down the drain while you wait for hot water to arrive as discussed earlier.

In the kitchen it can eleminate the wasted water that you run to get hot for your dishwasher etc.

When you really do need hot water you get it more quickly and without wasting any water which saves you additional energy. It's the perfect companion for low flow fixtures!